Boat in the Rain

Like the estuaries of sleep

yawning to the warm moon

that breaks the

seal of confession's wax

like the shining, the praise

the deep, the mutual transpiring

the lolling water veins

the hyacinth's leash

like being sought for pain

like the sand of subtle Junes

like flame

like a sea of dunes

an afternoon

like the arms that know no wings

the losing track, the consolings

the whisperings of love soon

and the blue tangents resume

the bays brown

like a wet gown

the threads of names

like the comings and goings

the looking through the frames

a boat in the rain.

The Pond

So what now

And for quite a long time

So what now

I was listening to music

being held up by the air

and then thinking farther out

where there might have been an end

to the place where forms share

And still I could not change or send

not even a ripple

that would not eventually flare

And I grew tired and simple

from taking life out of the world

and its mysterious unrepeated

loss

until my own face

scattered out into the trees

and lifted out up into the mountain

And then I turned

as if there was somewhere I had to go

and walked away from the reflection.

Rubble

Rattling in the peace less almost/afternoon

spangle the bodies and their engines

card/boarding patches blind

the intricacies of promise/downward causing

a stalled control/abstraction unsaid collapse

journey shocks\ paraded invisible

rubble surfaces \and at last forever

welcomes the beached atmosphere

Turn Here

First, I had forgotten

I was shouting over

the sun shower. Forgotten

that all the while I had

donated my heat to

an impregnable argument.

The stripper loved the way

I peeled an orange.

I’m sure that upset some.

But the downpour went unnoticed over the mimosas.

A relatively exotic weather pattern.

Soon, we knew, life would return

to its pre-shoplifting days.

And we would return to work

astray, and knee-capped in torrentials.

Words play out like catnip from a damp mouse.

A telephone rings and someone says the soggiest

goodbye. There is a dictionary and a word

in that dictionary, but the speaker

postpones its tintinnabulations.

Simply refuses to make a sound.

Another ampersand and observers

Like buoys on the shore, after paddling,

dry like canoes tipped toward the hot sun.

Magnificent droplets bead

everywhere in the background

of an argument being quietly

lightly repaired.

I Never Wanted To

As I divvied up the stars

ripening in the landscape

it hurt. And that’s why I

started writing down my

dreams or any thought

I might have on dreaming.

What I thought was a moth

clinging to your ankle was

really a clover. You were

showing me around even

though you we dead

and still I called you

something I regretted.

When I found out I was

flying someone sat me

down by my arms.

I replaced every reply

I ever made with a bowl

of tulips. To freshen them

up a bit. O lonely

breakfast star! I lack

what smoke lacks—

How horribly brittle

the paint on the swing

set is. This evening

is an overlooked cupola.

And figures fish with their

toes for a stone at the

bottom of a stream

amid the ruins of a

bilingual tomorrow

manana I mean.

It’s very simple.

At last we grow into

another person. Someone

completely foreign

to ourselves. I have this

thought every time I

revise the rhymes out

of my poems. Somehow

it is here you mysteriously

fade. You turn into

something runny.

And I awake with less

of an ability to love you.

The Light Changes Just Like That

A background without stars, without kinescope,

Without trappings, like a parade with lots of confetti

Parachuting into an argument that blows up

Into what we really hate about each other.

With my good hand I trail off a solitary letter.

It’s nothing phonetically, not even a whole bicycle.

Just a monsoon of leaflets I asthmatically perfected

Over a cup of grapes.

I write, “Go far away and be beautiful.”

So something beautiful will be far away.

A Wave

Nylon thoughts firmly prosper

no words fettle for answers

over the sea in some waded shadow

everything jagged, shadowed, leaded

one remarks like a timid first lover

confused, a memory at its corners

like many colored snow falls

your tongue between the gulf

of reflection and suffering

the quality of a country

called the land of petals

not the vain weather

nor that the compost queen

called to the beautiful preordained

impassible ruffian

"Thou hast managed

a wave."